Customer Reviews (2)

"A-Plus!"
Giles Goat-Boy (or the Revised New Syllabus) By John Barth (or maybe WESCAC) "A-Plus!"

This tremendous book opened with a "message from the publisher", declaring that two of their fiveassociate editors quit over the decision to publish this book and includeda written statement from each editor about their opinion of the book. Eventhough that set up the book (in my mind) to be much more raunchy andheathenistic than I thought it actually was, it was an extremely amusingaddition to an already great book.

The story begins in a goat barn andwe meet our hero Billy, George and GILES, alternatively. Max, an oldMoishian (Jew) brought up Billy as a goat intentionally in order to shieldhim from human misery. After meeting a human woman, Billy decides he wantsto become learned.

This story uses a university as an allegory for theUniverse and everything within - religion, politics and literature -follows that same allegory. One is "passed" instead of"saved" and "flunked" instead of "damned".The political leader is, of course, the Dean. God is the Founder and Satanis the Dean O' Flunks. Oedipus Rex and the Emperor's New Clothes (whichboth figure strongly in the story) are, respectively, Taliped Decanus andthe Chancellor's New Gown.

Throughout the story is mention of the"Quiet Riot" New Tammany College is having with their neighboringStudent-Unionist College. Both have Super computers, one WESCAC and theother EASCAC, that can EAT (steal the vital energy) of humans.

It turnsout the goat boy decides he is the next Grand Tutor (messiah) and travelsto New Tammany College to declare himself as such. There he meets a handfulof memorable characters (including another Grand Tutor) and must complete alist of assignments given him by WESCAC to "commence" and"graduate" so he can go on to graduate others.

This bookincludes bestiality, rape, incest, homosexuality, and many other thingssome may consider objectionable, but it is amazing how normal it soundscoming from George's viewpoint.

Avolatile reworking of human thought and history.
This is an amazing book once you've committed to it. The energy in the prose comes from the clash between a forced, post-apocalyptic perspectives and rosy-eyed romanticism. The most twisted, most brilliant reworking ofthe mythological paradigm, tackling along with it the cliches of authorshipand modern society. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

don't waste your money
This book is the most horrendously researched and written book I have ever had the misfortune of muddling through.The errors are so blatant as to be laughable.

For instance (1)Wolf asserts that Barth "literally pushed his way through to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Mormon caravans were preparing to move westward," where Barth joined a "handcar" company and pushed this "car" all the way to Utah, arriving in 1855.Now, there are a number of things that could account for the fact that if Barth did in fact leave Nauvoo with the Mormons that he arrived in Utah nearly a decade after those same Mormon's did.These things could be:(i)Unlike the carts everyone else pushed, Barth got stuck pushing a "car", which would slow anyone down; (ii)Barth would have been four when the Mormons left Nauvoo (and even if we consider that Wolf misstakingly left off the "t", pushing a cart at that age... (iii) He may have gotten lost--what would have been vast plains of Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming were trecherous, at best, (but when your four and pushing a car!)The truth: the Mormons left Nauvoo in Febuary of 1846--in wagons.Barth arrived in the U.S. in 1855. Handcarts were first used by the Mormons in 1856--the year Barth arrived in California. Although it is possible that Barth did in fact cross a portion of the U.S. with the Mormons, it is highly unlikely that he was in a handcart company.

(2)St. Johns was never called El Vado.It was however called El Vadito after Jose Savaadra (not Sol Barth)built a toll bridge accross the Little Colorado in the late 1860's so Sol Luna (not Jesus Lunas) could safely cross his sheep (yes, sheep--Barth was by no means close to being the first person to bring sheep to Arizona)accross the sporadically running river.

(3)There were families living in the area (obviously) when Barth came in and settled in 1874 (the year which, incidentally, he married--not 1884).Barth did not win the land in a poker game (although it does make for a great story!)Truth: Barth would have had his own squatters rights in the area, which he could have legitimately sold to the Mormons, instead he sold everyone else's squatters rights--right out from underneath them--for 750 (not 770) head of American (not Utah) cattle.

(4)The Udall family has never pronounced the name "Udell" and I can say that with certainty--I am one.

(5)Barth did not in any way build the Lyman Dam.The fact that Wolf would even think that a single man could build it makes me laugh out loud.Truth: it was the Mormon's idea after the Salado dam broke."Lyman" is from an apostle in the Mormon church who helped with the plans and got the Church's approval for the dam.A company from Denver company brought in new threshing machines and paid their part in cash in return for 3/5th's share of the stock and the Mormon's supplied labor and the remaining two-fifth's.It cost $250,000,000 to build and broke three years later killing eleven people--nine of them children.

(6) It would have been quite a trick for Jacob Barth to have the "Grand House" (we always called it the Barth Hotel) torn down considering he was dead.(Jacob died in 1979, the Hotel was torn down in 1984). Along those lines--Barth couldn't have had the Catholic Church that is there today built--he died in 1928, that particular church was built in the 1940's.

(7) Those poplar trees that Wolf says are still there today--aren't.Some wierd blight or something killed them all off in the 1950's.Those trees, by the way, weren't planted in the "cultivated" Salem.Salem was swamp land, which is why the Mormon's moved.Those trees were planted along the ditches (that Barth did not dig)in St. Johns.Incidentally--you can pick some rather delicious asparagus by those same ditches.

(8)The Barth's did not, by any stretch of imagination own a "city block" in St. Johns.A St. Johns block maybe (but still no).

(9) If there's really a nuclear power plant out there, nobody told us!And to think, all this time we've been sitting here in our homes thinking that a simple power plant is what sits out there...blinking.They even had the gall to call it Salt River Project...and people in Phoenix claim to get their electricity from it.

I could go on and on...and on, but, as ten is always a good number:
(10)Wolf says there are many variations regarding this next episode but it isn't necessary to sort it out...true, if ya actually know the facts: There was never a shoot-out between the Clanton's, the townsfolk and the "Greer Boys" (and there are certainly not any published reports saying so!!)Truth: The Greer's (not from Greer but Hunt) had a shoot-out with some local Hispanic boys after one of the Greer's cut the Greer earmark into one of the local's ears.The local boys holed up in the Barth Hotel and the Greer's in a small house across the street.Two were killed.Years later it's been alleged that the Clanton's robbed the Apache County Treasury--a crime the treasurer went to prison for.

What a waste of paper!!

Perpetuating the Legend of a Shyster
There is no doubt Sol Barth had a large impact on the development of St. Johns, Arizona.He used every gamblers trick of the trade to swindle the Hispanics out of their land and cattle, and as soon as he invited the Mormons to settle in the area, he cultivated a strife between the Mormons and the Hispanics to keep them constantly at odds with each other. The effects of this division are still present today.You have to give him credit for successfully playing both groups against each other so well!

In this book,Mr. Wolf mainly accounts from the stories passed down through the Barth family.There are no proper citations, no bibliography, no substantiating facts.Also, Mr. Wolf leaves out quite a bit of the more dirtier deeds of Sol Barth (and his brothers), which are documented in territory newspaper and legal paper archives.He tries to discredit Sol's imprisonment for embezzling from Apache County by saying many more were involved and were never brought to justice.As much as a sly gambler and opportunist Sol Barth was, why would he want to "show his hand" at dipping into the Apache County funds? The only exception of who he may have trusted while doing his dastardly deeds were his brothers, or maybe the person that was murdered while his trial was going on.

Here are a few clarifications for some of the inconsistancies in this book:
1)Even though Mr. Wolf states Sol Barth had "squatter's" rights over land he won gambling, Sol Barth never applied for any homestead patents in Arizona or New Mexico Territory.
2)There were Hispanics already living and sheepherding in the St. Johns (El Vadito Land grant) area long before Sol Barth attemped to settle in the area.For the area to be known as the El Vadito land grant, it had to be issued many years before the 1862 Homestead Act.
3)He didn't "bring" Manuel Antonio Candelaria to Concho as insinuated on page 15.With his newly started family, Don Candelaria was moving back to the area he knew and grew up in as an Apache captive.Other Hispanic families had settled in the Concho area during the period of time when Don Candelaria left the tribe to find a wife.
4) If Solomon Barth and Refugio Landovaso got married in Cubero on June 24, 1884, as Mr. Wolf states in his book, it would have had to be by a judge on that date.They were married January 21, 1885 by Father Badilla at the St. Johns the Baptist Catholic Church, more than a year after Refugio Landavaso gives birth to Cecilia on (baptism) December 8th, 1883.This was not very respectable during the Victorian era.I could only imagine how many ears burned over the town gossip on this breach of honor at the time!
5) Solomon Barth never gave anything to anyone out of the kindness of his heart, there always had to be a benefit in it for him.He had everyone believing he was very generous, and looking at it from another viewpoint, he was.For instance, it was common for him to supply the beer at the card games where he won loads of cattle and land.It is his daughters, Cecilia and Clara Barth, that upheld a decent level of morality and honor in the St. Johns community.It is their generousity and commitment to community that gained respect for the Barth name.

I have to give some credit to the stories told in this book.One star is for enough information given to accurately research them. The second star is for that the stories are somewhat entertaining despite how truthful they really are.In comparison of this book against archive records, it is surely evident that Mr. Wolf has some of the same attributes as his conniving, opportunistic great grandfather did.They both liked to tell a story, to make a gain or a buck,and to make themselves look bright and wonderful no matter how many embedded layers of dirt. This book is an attempted to continue to glorify a pioneering blackleg of Arizona. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume two in a collection of tales representing distinctive genres- from fairy tales to erotica-revealing the customs and societies in the medieval Middle East, as told by the mythic Sheherazade.

... Read more

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Product Description
This collection of short passages from the writings of Karl Barth reflects on the life of Christian faith. Each passage is related to a verse of Scripture, making this an ideal book for daily devotional reading and a variety of other occasions.
A book to be pondered and prayed with. - Joseph Mangina, Wycliffe College, Toronto ... Read more

Product Description
This Book is an important study of Barth's theology of human action, arguing that Barth's work cannot be properly understood unless his interest in human agency is fully appreciated. Throughout, Professor John Webster demonstrates the contemporary vitality of the style and content of Barth's theology. Many of the studies introduce posthumous texts by Barth which have so far received little attention (such as his lectures on Calvin and his ethics lectures), but which substantially revise the received views of Barth's thinking about ethics and human action. Developing from the author's earlier study of Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation (CUP, 1995), this book argues forcefully for Barth's work as a whole to be understood as moral theology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An excellent guide to Barth's theological ethics
Webster continues the task taken up in his previous effort, Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation, which examined Barth's mature ethical writings. Here, he expands the defence of his thesis that Barth's relativizing of human moralconsciousness before the Word of God does not at all compromise, but ratherproperly establishes, the true place of human action. He offers a revisionof previous efforts at Barth interpretation (similar to Bruce McCormack'swork) through a more exhaustive and systematic study, utilizing neglectedor previously unavailable texts such as Barth's Muenster Ethics and TheChristian Life, as well as the early ethical writings not addressed inWebster's last study in Barthian ethics. It is an important contribution toBarth scholarship and to theological ethics upon which further efforts willbe built. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Beyond Common Sense asserts that finding a place for well-being on the list of outcomes established to manage the child welfare system is not as easy as it first appears. The overall thrust of this argument is that policy should be evidence-based, and the available evidence is a primary focus of the book. Because policymakers have to make decisions that allocate resources, a basic understanding of incidence in the public health tradition is important, as is evidence that speaks to the question of what works clinically. The balance of the contributions in this book addresses the evidence. ... Read more